Visit to a French retirement home

Thursday, March 19th

This afternoon, Maria and I (and two other girls--one from Michigan and one from Florida) went to a retirement home in Angers. The retirement home was having a "USA Day" for the residents and they wanted us to come talk to them (in French) about the US.
When we arrived, they were handing out maps of the US to everyone. When they gave them to us, we noticed that there was a large circle around the state of Washington. We had a bad feeling about that.
Then, the woman leading the program got out her microphone and announced that they would be watching a movie on San Francisco, which is located in the capitol state of Washington! Erm. I quickly pointed out where San Francisco is on her map. Unfortunately she got the idea that San Francisco (located in California) is the capitol of the US. Eventually we got her all sorted out, although she still doesn't understand why we have two Washingtons. Neither do I, though.
The 40 minute video on San Francisco was made in the 1980's. It was pretty bad. The fashions! And it was funny to see the United States represented by an old video of San Francisco.
Then the woman asked us some questions and had us tell a little bit about where we live and who we are. The old people were so sweet! There was a woman in the front row who kept asking which of us lived near the Pacific coast. After we finished our presentation, she called me over and asked me to point out on her map where I live. I showed her and she said (in French, obviously) "You live in Oregon. I will save this map and look at Oregon and think of Natalie." She remembered my name! ;)
Then we were all ushered to tables to eat with the residents. They served a "typical American food"....which I have never seen in my life. It was a horrendous mixture of cake and pudding...turning out a disgusting texture and it had little chunks of neon colored jelly fruits mixed through it. We all gagged it down.
After chatting with the very friendly people sitting at our tables, they asked us to sing for them. That was a bit intimidating at first, but it was soon obvious that they didn't care how well we could sing (probably most of them couldn't hear well anyways), they just enjoyed that we were doing it. We sang Yankee Doodle...twice. Then they wanted more, so we sang the National Anthem. I never much liked that song, and I still don't. But we trudged our way through it and they were very happy with us.
When we were getting ready to leave, an older woman came over to say goodbye to us (in English--she wanted to practice). The program leader told her that she could give us "bises" (the kisses on each cheek). She gave me bises and then said very loudly--in English, "I kissed you!" That ranks as one of my funniest memories from France...
It was wonderful to bring joy to their day.

-Natalie